D and me or dang - do I have a brain tumor?

I have been moving along in my study of what I am eating and how it effects my body. Thought I would update you on my experiments on myself. Remember I told you my thoughts about inflammation and cancer. Okay, so my sister in law was sick for several years with a litany of symptoms. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. So she checked herself into the hospital and had every test imaginable conducted without finding an answer. Well the answer given to her was, "You are crazy and need an anti-depressant". Hell, I would be depressed and crazy if I were sick for three years with no diagnosis. Funny, she is a psychologist and could easily prescribe something for herself. She kept looking for an answer and one day a new endocrinologist (she had some thyroid issues) said they ought to check her vitamin D level. And bingo.... it was practically non-existent. Let me add that her C-reactive protein was something like 65, supposed to be less than 1. So they put her on 50,000 units of D3 a week and with that was able to raise her D levels to 75. With that, all of her symptoms disappeared and her C-reactive protein dropped dramatically. Back to me. So one of my new sites I look at all the time is the Vitamin D Council - these researchers are university people not the corporate machine cronies. I noticed on their site some information regarding breast cancer and D. For an experiment, I kept track of when I might be out in the sun and how much milk and oily fish, like sardines or whale blubber I consumed for two weeks. Whale blubber was not on sale that week. I came up with - nil. Hmmm. So I started to supplement with 1000 units of D3. I then went to 2000 units per day just because I couldn't find 1000 units. I have tried to spend more time out in the sun this summer. I read from the Vitamin D Council's newsletter that you probably need 5000 units a day for your body to operate like a fine tuned working machine. Six months later I had my D tested. This was my New Years resolution and so was tested at the beginning of July. And remember June was a cloudy month. I was at 41 versus the optimal level of between 50-100. So that means... I was deficient at cancer. I am now on 5000 units a day and will be retested at the end of the year. Let me say that I am doing this all on my own. My family doc says take only 1000 units a day and that 41 is good enough. My oncologist says...so and would you like some chemo? I know that 50,000 units a week isn't killing my sister in law but causing her to thrive, lose weight and reduce her thyroid medicine to practically nothing. Duh, you probably need D3 and maybe not that thyroid medicine. She told me that she began to lose weight when her levels hit above 50 so that is what I am watching now. She tested all of her patients that she was treating for depression and you guessed it - all were D deficient. I have the whole family on D except for Devin who is spending a lot of time out in the sun with minimal sunscreen. I will put him on a supplement this fall. So all you who say I am giving my son skin cancer need to review what people are saying about melanoma now. I won't let him get a sunburn but he is getting sun. By the way, Brian had been on an anti depressant and now is off and takes 5000 units of D3 a day. He is not out in the sun very much. He's doing well. Being D deficient is like hibernation syndrome. Many of the symptoms Debbie had was like a bear going into hibernation. Debbie's illness coincided with her starting her private practice and probably not being out in the sun as much due to her schedule. Plus she is a light skinned black woman. But she used to be darker because she went out in the sun. Is our weight issue in this country related to this? Is our increase in clinical depression related to this as well? Is cancer related to this deficiency? Newsflash, just out - 70% of all children are D deficient. Here's one for you. What if cells that are not receiving their dose of Vitamin D on their receptors, which is a hormone, decides to survive by utilizing other hormones that are available such as estrogen? How would that effect that cell that is now just screwed up? For a while survival is more important but then what? Per the Vitamin D Council, "Technically not a "vitamin," vitamin D is in a class by itself. Its metabolic product, calcitriol, is actually a secosteroid hormone that targets over 2000 genes (about 10% of the human genome) in the human body". Is this one of mechanisms that cause the cells to become genetically flawed. And then the mitochondria can't do their job of killing if off because of our other nutrition shortages? I'll let you know in December how the continuing experiment went. Oh by the way my C-reactive protein was . 75. I am not very inflamed but I will put money on the fact that I was likely inflamed two years ago at cancer. I have also upped my omega 3's quite a bit.

Okay on to another experiment. I am on aspirin therapy for my heart thing. I take a baby aspirin a day. But I got lazy and cheap. So I came across this bottle of aspirin - 325 mg in the cabinet. Well first I cut them in quarters and then I thought well just cut them in half. Lazy me - take a whole pill. Lots of old folks do for arthritis. One day after doing this for a while, I developed a strange metallic taste in my mouth after eating or drinking. Of course I googled strange metallic taste and the results were - first brain tumor. And I went around for a couple of days thinking, crap, do I have brain tumor now? Second entry was a zinc deficiency. Am I taking enough zinc with my multi? More research. What causes zinc deficiency? Aspirin. So thinking that if I did in fact have a brain tumor, one week of experimentation couldn't hurt. So off the aspirin for a week, up the zinc with one little pill a day. Guess what? The metallic taste went away. So now I am back to baby aspirin and every couple of days I throw a zinc into the vitamin mix. And I figure by now if I had a brain tumor, I'd have more symptoms that my strange sense of humor. My mom said that my dad during chemo had a strange metallic taste in his mouth. They told him to not use metal utensils to eat with - use plastic. Is this because chemo depletes your zinc and the funny thing ( it really isn't funny) is that zinc is needed for a healthy immune system which is exactly what you probably need to fight cancer.But hell, you're fighting it with chemo right? In my dad's case, after chemo he was better for a while and then cancer came back like gangbusters. His immune system was compromised. He died. Regarding the immune system. New research on the horizon regarding using your immune system for fighting cancer. Johns Hopkins is doing something like this for pancreatic cancer.